Stacey Chillemi: Is marijuana addictive?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana is not addictive in the way that nicotine, alcohol, prescription drugs, or hard drugs can be. Stopping the use of marijuana is much easier to do than quitting these other substances. Cannabis is also much less harmful to our bodies.
Stacey Chillemi: Does marijuana lead to harder drugs?
Anthony Franciosi: People who experiment with alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, or prescription drugs are all more likely to do harder drugs and the reasons vary. Marijuana is no more likely to lead to harder drugs than alcohol or other substances, if a person wishes to abuse drugs. Education is the key to help young people make the right decisions.
Stacey Chillemi: Is marijuana more dangerous than tobacco?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana is exceptionally less dangerous for a number of different reasons. Cigarettes contain radioactive elements that account for most of the cigarette-related cancer diagnoses. On the other hand, marijuana does not. THC has anti-inflammatory effects that can actually block chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Stacey Chillemi: Does marijuana cause cancer?
Anthony Franciosi: Not one single case of lung cancer or any other type of cancer has ever been linked to marijuana. Also, THC and other cannabinoids have been known to stop tumor growth in brain cancer, inhibit cancer cell receptors in breast cancer patients, help stop cancer cell invasiveness in prostate cancer patients, and have a myriad of other helpful effects for many different types of cancer.
Stacey Chillemi: Does marijuana cause other life-threatening health problems?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana poses no life-threatening side effects whatsoever.
Stacey Chillemi: Is marijuana useless or unnecessary for medical purposes?
Anthony Franciosi: No. Marijuana is vastly helpful for many medicinal purposes.
Stacey Chillemi: Does marijuana cause brain damage?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana does not directly cause brain damage, but it is important that children and teens do not use marijuana while their brains are still developing.
Stacey Chillemi: Does marijuana cause laziness (a.k.a. “amotivational syndrome”)?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana can cause laziness in a person who is a typically lazy. For motivated individuals, marijuana is found to be of great help, because it helps them experience a boost of creativity. Cannabis can also help show the bright side of a dim situation.
Stacey Chillemi: Why do you feel it should be legalized in all states?
Anthony Franciosi: Legalization is important for safety. By legalizing a flower that has been used in every state for generations, we eliminate the criminal element and can generate tax dollars to educate children, pave roads, and do good in our communities. By regulating and testing marijuana, we can ensure that the public health is never jeopardized and keep cannabis out of the hands of children and teens.
Stacey Chillemi: How would legalization benefit people?
Anthony Franciosi: They would have safe access to a medicine that they would otherwise have to seek out through illegal avenues. The medicine would also be tested and never sold to minors.
Stacey Chillemi: What is unique about regulating medical marijuana?
Anthony Franciosi: Marijuana regulation is unique because it has been around for so long, despite its illegality.
Stacey Chillemi: Do you feel medical marijuana can benefit many medical conditions better than the drugs they are currently offering? Why?
Anthony Franciosi: There are many cases throughout the medical field where marijuana proves to be a helpful addition to healthcare plans that people already have in place. Marijuana is not a cure-all to replace all other medicines, but for many people with cancer and other life threatening illnesses, THC and other cannabinoids have helped with their reliance on narcotics and chemotherapy drugs. This greatly improves their quality of life.
Stacey Chillemi: Medical marijuana has been helping thousands of people with cancer and epilepsy. Have you heard some similar statements that you would like to expand on to educate the public about on this topic?
Anthony Franciosi: Some of the possible negative side effects of chemotherapy are great discomfort, nausea, and the inability to eat. Marijuana has been proven to help with these patients’ appetite and has been used to replace chemotherapy drugs. THC also has been proven to shrink tumors in brain cancer patients. Marijuana also has anticonvulsant effects, which have been used to treat epilepsy dating back to ancient Africa, Greece, and Rome. Strains high in CBD are used to treat epilepsy and many of these strains have now been bred specifically for high CBD characteristics.
Stacey Chillemi: Do you think many are against medical marijuana because society is not educated about all the benefits it can provide for individuals if it is used properly?
Anthony Franciosi: The lack of education is a huge reason why medical marijuana is not being used as openly as it could be. However, the fact that it has been illegal for so long is also a big reason, especially for the older generations.
Stacey Chillemi: Why are people actually moving to certain states to obtain medical marijuana? For example, many parents were going to Colorado to get medical marijuana for epilepsy because the stands extracted from the marijuana leaf were controlling their children’s seizures better. Would you like to expand on this statement?
Anthony Franciosi: CBD high strains are proven to help with seizures, especially in children. CBD is also non-psychoactive, so it does not have mind-altering characteristics. If my child was suffering from seizures and my state did not allow access to this medicine, I think I would have to consider going somewhere where I did have access.
Stacey Chillemi: What’s the difference between regular grown marijuana and naturally-grown marijuana?
Anthony Franciosi: All-natural marijuana takes an approach where you nurture the soil and not the plant. Relationships between the roots and bacteria in the soil allow for the plant to seek out exactly which nutrients in the soil it needs. By allowing those soil relationships to thrive, the plant exhibits its most honest and distinct characteristics. Unnatural methods use chemical chelators to force nutrient uptake, which allows for a higher yield but in turn makes for a less distinct final product.
Stacey Chillemi: How did you do your homework on all of this?
Anthony Franciosi: My interest on this subject began almost 10 years ago with the Colorado medical marijuana program. I have been able to study the plant and do many trial and error tests with varying results, but my tests always showed me that organic cultivation methods produce a superior product. I was also a landscaper for the better part of ten years and have planted thousands of trees, shrubs, perennials, herb gardens, and annuals. This experience helped me gain knowledge on soil conditions, watering methods, and plant maintenance. For the past few years, I have also worked as an irrigation specialist building automated watering systems for lawns and gardens of various sizes and styles.
Stacey Chillemi: Why only allow dispensary owners to operate a grow facility? Why not allow independent grow facilities?
Anthony Franciosi: For many years, dispensary owners had to grow their own product in a vertical integration system. However, in the new retail market, wholesalers will be allowed to be separate from dispensaries.
Stacey Chillemi: Where will legal pot be grown ― outdoors on commercial farms, inside in confined growing spaces, or somewhere in between?
Anthony Franciosi: Legal pot is being grown in every type of facility, from outdoors to greenhouses, indoors, and in large warehouses. The Honest Marijuana Company facility has been designed in an indoor environment featuring state-of-the-art cooling that will use the cold Colorado air to cool our systems. Our facility will also have highly efficient alternative lighting that will cause significantly less energy draw than standard industry lighting.
Stacey Chillemi: If there is a commercial pot industry, businesses will have strong incentives to create and maintain the heavy users who use most of the pot. To get a sense of what this could look like, look no further than the alcohol and tobacco industries, which have found ingenious ways to hook and reel in heavy users. So will private companies be allowed to enter the pot market, or will states limit it to home producers, non-profit groups or cooperatives?
Anthony Franciosi: Private companies will be allowed to enter the market and I think that many of them will try to use similar tactics to alcohol and tobacco. At Honest Marijuana Company, our aim is to provide people with an extremely high quality and pesticide-free organic product, all farmed in a small facility with the final user in mind. Our hope is that marijuana can be used safely and, in some cases, even help people quit the use of alcohol or tobacco.
Stacey Chillemi: If pot is legal for adults, how will school and community prevention programs adapt their messages to prevent kids from using?
Anthony Franciosi: First, we need to regulate marijuana so kids don’t have access to it. If all the marijuana available for retail purchase is being sold through legal avenues, it will be much harder for teens and children to have access to it.
Stacey Chillem: Where can we go to learn more about you and the products and services that you provide?
Anthony Franciosi: “My company, Honest Marijuana Company, utilizes all-natural cultivation methods to produce only the finest eco-conscious cannabis products. You can find more info about us online at www.honestmarijuana.com.”
Stacey Chillem: How else are you helping to make cannabis cultivation and production more Earth-friendly.”
Anthony Franciosi: “We are one of only a handful of companies packaging our cannabis in Earth-friendly, reusable tin cans that are brand new to the pot industry. In contrast to the countless marijuana companies who package their product in wasteful, disposable plastic containers, our cannabis is packaged and sold in recyclable tin cans with pure nitrogen to ensure only the highest level of integrity and quality. This environmentally-sound packaging allows for the product to stay in its purest form and not be deteriorated by light or oxygen (consistent with our overall philosophy to provide only the highest quality all-natural and eco-conscious marijuana). Impermeable to oxygen and residual humidity, the tin cans are also inert to temperature fluctuations, meaning that they doesn’t secrete any chemical compounds that will kill the fresh aroma of the cannabis terpenes.”
Stacey Chillem: Honest Marijuana Company is set to release the first commercially available hemp cigar. Could you please tell us more about it? What inspired you to create it?
Anthony Franciosi: Honest L’s are the first marijuana cigar rolled from hemp that delivers a blunt-like experience without the need to roll it yourself or the harshness of a tobacco wrap. Our team members have always been fans of the long, smooth smoke a blunt can deliver but often passed on the option due to the low quality of most common wraps and the health risks associated with their ingredients. By combining our organic material with an all-natural hemp wrap, we created Honest L’s to satisfy the urge for a smooth, full bodied smoking experience without tobacco.
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